smart aleck was written for Pascal Meyer, who shares my enthusiasm for toy pianos.

A few years ago, I wrote a piano piece entitled fulcrum, which was a set of variations revolving around one central chord heard throughout the piece (the "fulcrum"). My idea for fulcrum was for the variations to be played in any order (chosen by the performer), with the central chord played in between each one. One of the variations I wrote was hypnotically rhythmic and quite aggressive, and I debated whether I should include it in the set. In the end, I did, and those thirty seconds of music within the piece are so explosive compared to the very calm,
introspective music surrounding it.

I always wanted to explore those musical ideas to their full potential, so I decided to take it as the basis of this piece. I wanted to explore rhythms that were relentless, almost antagonistic, always similar but ever evolving. The incessant dyads that permeate the piece sound so rich on the toy piano; their pitches are so harmonically dense and out of tune so as to become an afterthought.